Watch As It Is in Heaven For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Pretty Good

How sad is this?

For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

An internationally renowned conductor, Daniel Daréus, played by Michael Nyqvist, suffers a heart attack during a performance and returns to his native Swedish village to take stock of his life. Yet, his efforts to keep aloof in self-reflection do not succeed. After overcoming his initial reluctance, he becomes the local church choir teacher and inspires a bunch of no-hopers not only to find their true singing voice but also to get in touch with their inner, more sensual selves. Inevitably, this outsider-come-guru with his New Age ideas rubs up against the conservative-minded curate Stig, played by Niklas Falk.However, what sounds a promising story is holed beneath the waterline by cliché and clunking pretentiousness. The priest is a leftish caricature--weak, hypocritical, envious. Armed only with his 'outdated' ideas of sin and redemption, he cannot compete with the touchy-feely emotions awakened in each of the choir members by Daréus who, adorable with his air of pained vulnerability, liberates (albeit unwittingly) the inhabitants from the stifling moral climate which pervades the village. With his peculiar intimate way of communicating music, he takes the inhabitants to a higher mystical plane, which, of course, is clearly intended by the director, Kay Pollak, to be several orders higher than Stig's fusty Christianity. However, the director's efforts are so clumsy in this regard, that no such effect is achieved. The director has also decided to lend the film a strong, but slightly jarring feminist slant. All the male characters are either weak or weak, stupid and bad, or completely inoffensive like the protagonist himself (heart condition) and the retarded youth who plays, rather predictably, a mysterious role at the heart of the group. In contrast, all the women are strong, intelligent and sensitive characters. The battered wife of the group sings solo a defiant song about 'finding herself' and so on. But it's the attempts at profundity that annoy. Daréus' new-found girlfriend, Lena, played by Frida Hallgren tells him 'there is no such thing as death'. I suppose that's meant to sound profound. But it drops from her mouth like a potato from a torn sack. Yet it's the finale which finally exposes the vacuity of the film, where, without giving the end away, the director's final stab at sublimity merely makes you squirm in embarrassment.

Kay Pollack's sometimes annoyingly uplifting moralistic film, "As It Is in Heaven", shows the story of a man returning to his hometown marked by his own sad memories of his childhood. Daniel Darius, played by Michael Nyqvist, is an extremely successful and gifted conductor, composer, and musician but is forced to question his career after a serious health scare. Daniel moves back to his hometown and is coerced into listening to a local choir, despite his protests. He eventually concedes to directing and teaching the choir once he discovers an interest in one of the choir members. The influence of religion is heavy and rather obvious in this film. The choir is a church choir that sings religious songs, both in Swedish and English. There are moralistic themes in the storyline such as: believing in oneself, finding ones voice, going on despite the odds, etc. The fact that the main character, Daniel Darius, is shown to have risen from oppression into excellence and to have overcome odds propels him to some sort of Christ figure. If Pollack had intended to make any subtle comparisons or similarities to religion, he failed miserably. In a bit of an interesting contrast, Pollack also highlights violence, specifically violence perpetuated by men who are supposed leaders of their church or family. Conny, played by Per Morberg, is Daniel's childhood bully who has stayed in their hometown and married a woman whom he controls in almost every aspect beats his wife and Daniel when he is displeased. Also, the pastor, Stig played by Niklas Falk, turns to violent actions against his wife Inger, played by Ingela Olsson when she displays questionable actions in his view. It is difficult to understand why Pollack included this violence alongside the more moralistic and holy religious themes especially given the fact that the pastor is involved in this violence. So it almost seems as if Pollack is supporting spirituality and religion but not the hierarchical nature and old rules of the church. Stemming from this strange side by side comparison of religion and violence, the idea of hypocrisy is shown through the entire film. Going back to Stig, the pastor, it is revealed to the viewer that he hides pornographic magazines in his house for his own sexual pleasure, and his wife knows of this but doesn't acknowledge it until a key point in their relationship. So while he claims to be this holy man, he is just as weak to sexual pleasures as any regular person, and instead of acknowledging this, he chooses to hide it and make himself a hypocrite. Towards the beginning of the film, it is shown how Daniel lives and breathes his music, which is the love of his life. Once he moves to his hometown, he initially refuses to help a choir who only wants to live and breathe their own music. It seems that Daniel understood what a hypocritical stance this was and decided to help the choir (it also helped that a beautiful woman was a member in the choir, but I'd rather give Daniel a bit more credit than that). Now as to why I am only giving this film a five out of ten. I do not enjoy films that hit a viewer over the head with the intended theme or moral of the story. This is purely personal preference when it comes down to it, but I'd rather have a very open film that has many interpretations than a very closed one with a very intended result. It may be more approachable to more viewers because of how easy the meaning of the story is to grasp, but I'd like to think that I am not a normal, ignorant film-goer. This just wasn't a sophisticated plot that made me think. Nonetheless, Michael Nyqvist did a wonderful acting as Daniel Darius and his wide range of emotions, but even a good actor cannot save a movie like this one. "As It Is in Heaven" most definitely had an agenda in its storyline, not that that is generally a bad thing, but how Pollack went about doing it made it too redundant for my taste. Although there were some interesting contrasts between religion, violence and hypocrisy, it did not feel as though those contrasts were as developed as they could be to make this film more thought provoking and profound. The film was most definitely intended to be uplifting and "warm fuzzy"-inducing, but rather I felt more annoyed than anything after the film ended.

It is almost impossible to believe that Kay Pollack's As It Is in Heaven was made only ten years ago in 2004 for it feels dreadfully more dated than that. This Academy Award nominated film, which is essentially the Swedish version of a Lifetime Original Movie with a domestic violence plot line to boot, follows renowned conductor Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist) as he returns to his childhood home in the north of Sweden after suffering a heart attack in the middle of one of his concerts. As a kid, Daniel was ruthlessly beaten and bullied by his peers, but he escaped this harsh childhood with the dream of making music that would connect with people. Upon his return home, Daniel becomes the cantor for the local church choir and starts to bring the townspeople together though what he sees as the spiritual quality of music. Complications arise when Daniel confronts a jealous church pastor, an abusive husband, and various choir members who doubt the sincerity of Daniel's project. Unfortunately, the only remarkable thing about Heaven is how painfully generic it is. Everything in this film is simple and dull, as if the story arcs, characterization, dialogue, and music were all clumsily smashed into creation by a blindfolded kid with an unwieldy sledgehammer rather than by a skilled artist with a deft touch. The problem begins with a weak script that relies entirely on meager clichés. For example, our hero, Daniel, is the stereotypical passionate artist, but he's severely lacking in depth. All we know is that he loves music, falls in love with a girl, and then dies, both randomly and predictably. His foil, the uptight Pastor Stig (Niklas Falk), is disturbed by Daniel's free-flowing ways and surpasses Daniel only in one-dimensionality. In a particularly ridiculous scene, Stig gets into an argument with his wife, Inger (Ingella Olsson), over his conservative ideas about sexuality. Stig slut- shames his wife, explodes and has passionate sex with her, and then denounces the whole incident the next morning. This tired portrait of the repressed and hypocritical clergyman does nothing for the film, nor adds any interesting conflict or complexity.Beyond the disappointingly shallow characterizations, Heaven makes a misstep with the plot's desperate grabs for sentimentality. There is, of course, the domestic violence plot line with the overdone, over-the-top abusive husband that makes a mere caricature of this real and important social problem. The issue is not that people like the outrageous abuser Conny (Per Morberg) do not exist in real life, but that he and his wife, Gabriella (Helen Sjöholm), are written in such a hollow way so as to make it seem like the professionals behind Heaven have never actually encountered a real human being who has been involved the cycle of abuse. In the end, Heaven exhibits a detached artificiality that undermines the film's attempt to say something meaningful about the tragedy of abusive relationships and about the empowering triumph for those who survive them. Then there's Tore (André Sjöberg), the young man who is at first shunned and underestimated by members of the choir for his intellectual disability and then ultimately accepted. Despite the fact that the film obviously casts Tore in a positive light, it is nothing more than cheap idealization. Heaven doesn't demonstrate respect Tore as person or a character, but instead uses him as bait for warm fuzzies and reduces him to the object of a patronizing smile. The film's dialogue also betrays some serious flaws. Heaven takes little advantage of the filmic medium, and the characters often end up explaining their motivations and feelings outright rather than illustrating them through distinctive behavior, well-written characterization, and revealing cinematic techniques. For instance, when Stig shuts down the choir, he yells at Daniel unnecessarily, "I'm taking the choir away from you!" Later when Inger criticizes Stig's vendetta against Daniel, she shouts, "You're not angry at him, but at what he evokes in you!" Of course, the English subtitles may not capture the exact essence of the original Swedish, but the fact remains that a truly solid script would be able to communicate its themes without any of these clunky verbal explanations. Some movies are disappointing in their failure to live up to their full potential, but As It Is in Heaven is not one of them. Wobbly from the start, Heaven is terrible in a boring kind of way. Perhaps time is partly to blame for how stale the movie feels, and it is possible that in its day, Heaven had some aura of charm and novelty. However, in 2014, it's difficult to see through the haze of bathetic storytelling and overdone conventions.

This beautiful movie is a fine work of art and tells us the Sweden of Garbo and Ingrid Bergen still lives. Only the title seems out of line. The story isn't about heaven or music or even Sweden. All of its beauty is devoted to love; free love. It's real, awesome beauty, too! We're offered a superb cast of cinematic actors, topped by Michael Nyquist, whom I'd never before seen. He's the bona fide charmer in this story; never taking a false step; until we see the end of it all.It begins as a paean to sensitivity and inclusive love. The love of people and of music. The setting is Sweden; Norrland, and we have nothing but exquisite Swedish acting. The music also becomes incomparable as the plot thickens. No one could ever deny the sheer talent that went into As It Is In Heaven. The young Swedish heroine Lena, played by Frida Hallgren, actually convinces us she's an angel who can see other angels. Spoilers ahead: Only we find out in time she's a seductress, of whom the whole town is resentful except one young autistic character, who really resembles an angel. Lena comes to represent in this story, the supposed power of free love over Christian love.With no apologies.Most of the others in this town, who join in their church's choir; are portrayed as rough, morose and unromantic overall. Their pastor is exposed gradually as a vile hypocrite, and he comes to hate our musician hero Daniel; who takes away his Christian congregation. How? With LOVE! Whereas, Lena the angelic heroine is seen as bold goodness and honesty; because she's liberated and always cool. Bed-hopping and stripping naked are seen here as angelic because: After all this is the Sweden of Garbo and Ingrid Bergman. Graphically we learn this is hardly As It Is in heaven.Love conquers all, we're hammered at. The writers tell you how unhappy people of faith always are. They're wife-beaters, bigots and false prophets. And they know nothing about LOVE. Only a cupid from Sweden can explain love to movie fans. We must be taught there is no sin in any sexual way, no penalty for it, and no impediment at all to immorality. All that isn't pumped up is Swedish homosexual love. In the golden years of Hollywood Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina had to step into an oncoming train paying for her sexual liberation. Now a film from her homeland tells us we should give up all those superstitions about free love's consequences. (Just stick to the script, where they'll tell you all the inside scoop.) This film deserves a 4 for great acting. Not a film for your children to see. Unless you want to see them become oversexed romantics.